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Republican Leadership Believes O’Donnell Will Cost Them The Senate



Sep 15, 2010 37 Comments ›› Pat Dollard

Delaware Primary

The Upshot:

With polls showing significant GOP momentum this fall, Republicans in recent weeks began to believe they had a real chance of retaking control of the Senate in November. But a major primary upset at the hands of a tea party insurgent on Tuesday may have put the Senate GOP’s dreams of a majority at serious risk.

In the biggest electoral surprise of the night, conservative activist Christine O’Donnell defeated longtime GOP Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware’s Republican Senate primary. Castle, a moderate who once served as the state’s governor, had been so favored to win in November that his decision to run had reportedly influenced Democrat Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, to abandon plans to seek his father’s old seat.

But with O’Donnell’s come-from-nowhere win Tuesday night, top Republicans in Washington now see virtually no chance the GOP will be able to pick up the Delaware seat this fall. As a result, they admit their already slim chance of winning back Republican control of the Senate is likely dead.

“It’s hard to see a path for us,” one senior Republican official, who declined to be named while discussing party strategy, told The Upshot. “Never say never, but it has become much harder for us after tonight.”

According to Public Policy Polling, just 31 percent of Delaware voters believe O’Donnell is “fit” to hold office. She trails Democrat opponent Chris Coons by 26 points, according to the latest PPP survey. On Tuesday night, the National Republican Senatorial Committee issued a tepid statement of congratulations to O’Donnell, but a GOP official told Fox News the party has no plans of putting money into the race.

Still, O’Donnell’s surprise victory was significant win for the Tea Party Express, which spent $250,000 at the last minute to boost O’Donnell’s campaign. Since the first primaries in early spring, she’s the eighth tea party-endorsed candidate to defeat an establishment-backed GOP contender in an election cycle that has been dominated by voters choosing change over experience. Two weeks ago, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski lost her primary race to Joe Miller, who was backed by Palin and the Tea Party. Other surprise tea party wins among Senate candidates this year include Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky. In Florida, Marco Rubio was also endorsed by tea party activists, although he’s tried to move toward the middle since winning the primary last month.

The difference between O’Donnell and other tea party-backed Senate candidates is she’s running in a state that traditionally elects moderates. O’Donnell, a perennial candidate who once argued against masturbation on a MTV special, is not likely to move toward the middle, as Rubio has, and she doesn’t look to benefit from the same anti-incumbent wave that’s driven Angle’s poll numbers against Harry Reid in Nevada. That’s the key reason why national Republicans are so loathe to embrace O’Donnell’s candidacy. Not that she cares.

“They have a losing track record,” O’Donnell told CNN Tuesday night. “If they’re too lazy to put in the effort that we need to win, then so be it.”


  • Ohnooo

    Screw the RNC, if they wanted to back a friggin RINO who supports cap and trade and is way to the left, then I might just have to send them a lil email saying sorry I’ll be sending O’Donnell my RNC contribution…

    • JIM D

      I would guess they have already noticed the folks have started donating directly to our picks. That is why they are so pissed off. And it may be a good time to get some new RNC leadership. It’s becoming very clear these crooked fucks have been bought by the left! When the voters choose their favorite R in a primary the looser should dissapear not seek a run by another party. and the RNC should back the winner 100%. Something is fucking wrong with what is happening!

  • Bob

    The GOP leadership is out of touch. Why should republicans vote for this gun control supporting RINO? I agree. Screw the RNC

  • Desert Rat

    Agreed! The NRSC won’t see one penny from me or most of my friends and associates until they decide to wake up and AGGRESSIVELY promote conservative ideology and candidates.

    As for money, check out their financial status. The Congressional side is rolling in dough, while the Senate side is having to take out a loan to cover the election. That says everything!

    Meanwhile, I’ll be sending my bucks directly to the candidates of MY choice! Screw you NRSC.

  • Ty

    As a follower of politics, last night’s results are incredibly interesting.

    On one hand, the Republicans probably “gave away” a couple of Senate seats.

    On the other hand, as others have pointed out, what the hell is the point of electing a Senator that will side with the left the majority of the time?

  • RetAF

    So be it. Better to have a democrat elected than a RINO. Even if means dems “control” the senate. Lets keep our focus on 2012.

  • wwtd

    Here come the Whigs…

  • Bobby E.

    It has become evident that GOP leadership is truly in the tank with the Dems and trying to hide that fact. They can’t hide any longer. The time has come for a third party. People like Bachman, Vitter, et al would likely distance themselves from the GOP and join this third party. And, no I’m not talking about a party with the likes of Ron Paul as a member. He can take a hike … and his screwball supporters with him! Screw the GOP! My only comment on this tremendous win to unseat a doofus and traitor is this: how do you like us now Odunga?

    • Gaige Mosher

      Screw a third party. That would just hand victory to the Dems in every single election of consequence.

      The Tea Parties are doing EXACTLY what needs to be done. Infiltration and sabotage of the Establishment GOP. Drag the Grand Old Party to the right, kicking and screaming if need be.

    • political.fish

      I’m with Greg on this one. The ‘tea party’ is not a novel (third) party. It is the mainstream conservative ‘worldview’ population exerting itself through the natural political process. It is the so-called ‘silent majority’ who is silent no longer. The RNC is an organ of the political establishment who has taken advantage of a peace loving people for far too long. No third party is necessary. The will of the people will prevail by ballot, or bullet. Such is the nature of a free people. Obama and the left represent (and actually are) the antithesis of a free republic and must be removed AND HELD ACCOUNTABLE criminally for their actions. If they prevail, individual freedom as defined by the founders is dead, and our Nation destroyed.

    • politicalfish

      That would be, Gaige, not Greg. Sorry.

  • Jett

    O’Donnell delivered an upset in the DE primary and I’ll place my bet now, she’ll deliver another one in November. :wink:

    Its premature and wishful thinking her win will hand Dems a victory.

    Voting out the RNC trash, one primary at a time. You gotta love it!!

  • Razor

    The RNC has become the additional platform – in cahoots with the Communists – for screwing Americans. What we’re seeing from the RNC is the same old Establishment bullshit that is only in politics to appease the Sand Nigger in the WH and to get fat and lazy. They’re about as adept at knowing the Constitution as the Communist Liberal Wingnut Senators and Congress Can’t Cunts of the Demo-commies.All these RINOs should be tried for treason and sedition right beside their Demo-Commie brethren.

    It’s time to back real Americans like Palin, Bachman and O’Donnell and let the rest sit in their own shit. Not one dime leaves these pockets in backing the RNC.

  • aceofwands

    From Drudge…

    CASH POURS IN FOR O’DONNELL; CAMPAIGN WEBSITE CRASHES…

  • mertin

    The Tea Party ought to be about a level playing field and not about supporting the development of a stagnant economy dominated by vast corporations with the wealth to buy up resources and stifle competition.

    America is rich ONLY when the middle class are active and prospering.

    This modern idea that many people now push that the rich make jobs is total hogwash. America’s economy has been in decline since the 70s. The internet and computers, a new level playing field, produced a fresh boom without which we’d be in a real state already.

    And who created that?

    Bill Gates – middle class
    Paul Allen – middle class
    Steve Jobs – middle class
    Steve Wosniak – middle class
    Larry Ellison – working class
    Sergei Brin and Larry Page – middle class

    I could go on: HP, Dell, Intel, Cisco, Compaq, YouTube, Facebook, Orkut, Hotmail… and abroad Vodafone, Amstrad, Acorn, Risc, ARM, Virgin, Body Shop, Arcadia, Dyson, Formula 1 Racing… all middle class, or working class, endeavours. Not a single one started by a millionaire.

    Working class Americans need to stop hero worshiping millionaires. All the billionaires above were educated working/middle class people when they developed their ideas.

    What is it with modern Americans wanting to be serfs? Even soldiers aren’t respected… they go away as young heros and come back injured, needing care, and get called commie trouble makers.

    Stop hating yourselves. America’s future isn’t in brown-nosing millionaires who smile publicly and laugh privately at your redneck stupidity for supporting them. Our future is in middle class productivity. That doesn’t come from worthlessly waiting for a millionaire to offer you an unskilled job.

    Billionaires are funding O’Donnell (and the Tea Party) because she suits THEIR agenda. Our agenda is not to be low paid serfs to people who live in the pretty parts of the country they buy up while polluting the bits we get to live in.

    • trustme1013

      I am standing and applauding you, sir! :beer:

    • mertin

      Now you should rightly ask for some kind of proof of what I say. So here it is.

      Since the 1960s the rich of America have substantially increased proportion America’s wealth. Taxation of the rich has declined.

      Great say the Neo-Cons: they’ll create more jobs.
      Will they?

      US debt as a proportion of GDP has risen since the 1960s.
      Over the same period US GDP versus other major economies has declined.
      Disposable income for the middle & working classes has fallen.

      So at what point was the US economy richest, with low debt, low poverty, low unemployment and vigorous, profitable companies?
      It’s the same point at which the American middle classes were best off.

      Beck, Limbaugh and Palin are apologist fronts for corporations who would close the US economy down with cosy monopolies… much like Brazil’s economy. They have no interest in a vibrant middle class. They are paid up, bought out fakes.

      And those who keep spouting Fox News propaganda as fact are the saddest fools of all. If Capitalist middle class America really can’t see that billionaire Rupert Murdoch is gaming them (courtesy of Reagan’s removal of the legal requirement for fair and balanced reporting), just like the Koch billionaires, then there’s no hope for this country.

      Read Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, if you want to learn how the rich intend to game voters:

      “The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest.”

      To paraphrase Bernays: democracy isn’t the right of the masses to vote for policies they want, implemented by politicians… that’s only what you are encouraged to fantasise.

      Democracy is the right of the rich to manipulate the process of government through propaganda to give a sense of empowerment to the masses while implementing policies which suit themselves.

      That is what Fox News is all about. We used to abhor Nazi propaganda and consider ourselves above the appointment of a Minister for Propaganda, like Goebbels. When Ronald Reagan removed the legal requirement for news stations to offer balanced reporting (a requirement that still exists in most democracies) he legalised propaganda. He legalised one tool to implement Edward Bernays’ vision of social control.

  • mertin

    How about brilliant scientists… how many rich or aristocratic inventors can you remember?

    Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Fleming, Watson, Crick, Pasteur, Curie… they’re all middle class.

    Then there’s John Harrison who developed the world’s most accurate clocks, in the most brilliantly inventive way, and the first way to tell longitude… he was a carpenter!

    So who are the aristocrats?

    I know of one: Wernher von Braun – rocket engineer who’s technology was the foundation on which NASA was built. He developed the V2 rocket for Hilter.
    But we are talking about a very minor aristocratic family… and his life was middle class.

  • TC

    The republican leadership believes it will cost THEM leadership positions.

    The tsunami is coming, learn to surf or get the fuck out of the water.

  • Chuck O

    Fuck the GOP if they want to prance through the fields hand in hand with the Democrats. I want fiscal conservatives in office. I want people who will say we need to make cuts so instead of cutting police depts, fire depts, and education-lets cut welfare.

    I’m tired of the government jacking me up and taking from my hard earned paycheck to give to the bums that won’t work.

    And why should they work? Big daddy gov’t gives them food, shelter, medical care, cell phones, daycare for the kiddies, free breakfast year round at the schools (which basically turns the school into a soup kitchen), along with a bunch of other programs supposedly designed to help people out of poverty.

    Over 70 different welfare programs–all set up to keep people dependent on the government.

  • RTLM

    Yeah. That Orin Hatch – beatable with no problem. And remember that rube, George W. Bush. Not a chance in hell.

    And most of all, remember Reagan. The idiot sop couldn’t find a majority with both hands.

    //Dem historical narrative

  • mike3481

    The moment O’Donnell labeled Castle an “Obama Republican” he wasn’t gonna win the Senate seat …
    period.

    And whoever in the RNC is spouting this shit about O’Donnell needs to shut their mouth right fucking now, cos their identity will be uncovered and their career as a RNC employee will come to a permanent end.

    The RINO status quo is all but over, yet some within that status quo haven’t figured it out yet.

    • mertin

      If O’Donnell is a paranoid, superstitious simpleton then of course it ought to be make more public.

      Simpletons with a few prejudices that like up with competitive capitalism aren’t what we need.

      Above I wrote about the American hero worship of millionaires… as if working and middle classes never started a business! The other idiot prejudice we suffer from is voting for a cute face and a full head of hair. It’s absurd.

      We are in a difficult situation. If we choose to vote for simpletons we’ll get prayer groups and pollution when we need innovation and insight. Cute bimbos posing in trouser suits won’t fix America. I can’t believe the trust in Palin and O’Donnell and the lack of faith in Rue Paul… a proven innovator and thinker.

    • mertin

      Should have read:

      Simpletons with a few prejudices that LINE up with competitive capitalism aren’t what we need.

      And neither are anti-masturbation prayer groups! Come on folks! This is nightmarishly stupid!

  • Pull

    Time for us to clense the gop of its nose up attitude.

  • Support your local Jihadi Killer

    What the RNC doesn’t get is that a vote for a RINO is a win for the Democrats anyway. Why not vote for O’Donnell.

  • Remmy

    I stopped giving any money to the RNC, the Republican Congressional Campaign Commtitee and Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.

    I give to INDIVIDUAL candidates regardless of their location in the U. S.

  • http://topgun topgun

    :smile: :smile:

    I’ll send her a buck or two.

    It’s time to storm the gates.

    :beer: :gun: :beer: :gun: :beer: :beer: :beer:

  • Ohnooo

    I think Ol’ Mertin has a few things he must have learned in some College communal think tank while smokin a leeetle too much weed or whatever it was that fucked up your brain..Your lil diatribe about Conservative Billionaire worship,and your middle class diatribe is right out of some fuckin goofball wako conspiratorial thesis from lord who knows where the hell people like you come from…

  • Sigi

    Liberals in GOP clothing we do not need….I’d rather the GOP lose, then slide farther left more interested in wins then values….maybe at least when the communist part….I meant the Democratic Party completely destroys our economy and throws the nation into turmoil, there will at least be a REAL alternative to socialism. I’ve had it with “Socialism Lite” being rebranded GOP.

  • aceofwands

    And the problem would be what exactly?

    Obama covertly turned off the credit card identifier on his campaign website so the Federal Elections Commission could not track off-shore money coming into his campaign. These guys are Americans exercising their 1st Amendment rights.

    Obama has Soros…so let them support who they want.

  • Jett

    Given the blackhole our Country is racing towards, I could care less where those ‘conservative’ $$ come from. ANYTHING is better than the current Administration and the likes of Pelosi, Reid, Rangle, Frank, etal.

    First things first…

  • TC

    The average tea party member is smart enough to think for themselves. The are supporting something that THEY believe in. No one is buying this “Man behind the curtain” bullshit.

  • mertin

    Read the article.
    This isn’t some million dollar handout. This is a systematic gaming of the system by a couple of extremist libertarians spending hundreds of millions of dollars to manufacture policy that benefits themselves.

    This pair believe in virtually no government, no environmental regulation, no workers rights, no security services, no foreign policy, small army, low uniform taxes, little state education.

    So what are we talking about? They want to take the US back to around 1750… only with 300 million people in it.

    Anarchy on 3.8 million square miles is fine when you’ve got a population of 1 million. Anarchy with a population density 300 times higher is a whole different issue.

    Now you think these guys are good patriots? Just read about their attempts to prevent the registering of the carcinogenicity of formaldehyde in the USA if you think they give a damn about your health.

    These are guys who dream of FoxConn like working practises for the USA.

    I cannot believe the naivety of some conservatives in their hero-worship of billionaires. Capitalism is a middle class pursuit. Monopolies are what these billionaires are after.

    Sometimes I dispair at working class Republicans cheerleading the rich: Paris Hilton’s gonna save the USA.. ra ra ra!

  • tahDeetz

    Isn’t that the same “New Yorker” magazine that’s right now shilling for that down-low jihadist Iman Rauf?

    Is that your “source” ??

    tD

  • tahDeetz

    mertin,

    Btw, cutting government to the bone sounds pretty good to most here.

    It’s called Constitutionalism in certain parlance. You sound rather ‘weak’ on the subject.

    Lay off that lead-paint. You may think it’s tasty, but it aint no snack.

    Che’ was not a very good man.

    tD

  • politicalfish

    Mertin is a long time troll who finds solice in typing because his mouth is too full with liberal cock to speak.